Freelance DevOps Engineer

I help tech startups get ready for their growth

*ABOUT ME

Who I am & what I do

Julien 'Lta' Ballet

DevOps Engineer / Epitech ’09 / ex-Facebooker

I help tech startups to define, setup and grow their infrastructure and processes.

Whether it’s your development infrastructure and processes, ensuring your dev team can easily and safely ship the last killing feature of your app, or your production infrastructure, to handle the quickly growing flow of customer your product deserves, infrastructure is a key component of your business ! I’ll make it safe, available and scalable using a state-of-the-art tech stack.

App hosting

Communication

I proactively report about my work, and provide you with options and guidance for the next steps

Troubleshooting

System’s down ? I’ll bring it back up in no time ! Performance issue ? I’ll find the bottleneck and remove it !

Custom solution

You have a complex problem ? Specific constraints ? I’ll write down the software you need to make it work

Chef

Although it’s not my only tool, I’ve been managing the world’s largest chef deployment, so it’s one of my power tools

*CLIENTS

I work with cool companies

Although I’ve work with companies ranging from seed-stage startups to multinational corporations, I tend to thrive in smaller environments. Here’s a sample of the companies I enjoyed the most working with:

We Digital Garden

Designers & Makers for the new economy – Digital agency

Teezily

One of the world’s leading specialists in print on-demand textiles and accessories.

Gabsee

Augmented reality chat app

Paris.shopping

Shop the finest Parisian boutiques, from home.

All the company logos are the property of their respective owner. Their presence in this list does not constitute an endorsement.

*TESTIMONIALS

Don't take my word for it

Enzo Finidori

CTO & Co-Founder – Teezily

It is really pleasant to work with Julien, both on the human and technical level. His skills cover a wide range from assembly code to high level programming languages through system administration. When I face a crucial problem on my production servers, he’s the first one I contact due his calm and rapid analysis that enables him to address the matter. As an engineer I can say with no doubt: He’s part of the very few that we look up to.

Gael COAT

CTO & Co-founder Paris.shopping, CS Teacher, Tech advisor

Julien is one of the most talented Engineer I have ever worked with. He is not only a sharp technician, he also got a deep understanding of business-related impact of IT solutions and infrastructures which always made him a really smart advisor, able to detect and analyse opportunities and risks in a very accurate way.
I sincerely endorse him for any strategic jobs which require a heavy technical background and a good ability to understand complex business issues.

*PROCESS

That’s how I work

You need reliable partners to succeed. Our goal here is to build a strong relationship based on transparency and trust. This is a core value of my business and at the core of how I work with my customer. But trust doesn’t just happen, it needs time and good communication to grow. This requirement is at the root of the process I recommend to my customers:

Initial call

This informal first contact, which usually last between 30 to 60 minutes, is an opportunity for me to learn about you, your business and most important or immediate concerns. You will also answer all your questions. At the end of the call we should be able to evaluate if we’re a good fit for each other.

Exploration

If some financial evaluation or technical exploration was needed by your particular situation, I usually get back at you within 1 or 2 day(s) with the relevant data

Trial period

Our goal is to build trust and a short (2-5 days) trial period is a great way to start. On most projects, this is enough time for me to deliver value and for us to realise if we’re a match.

First iteration

Rome wasn’t built in one day ! We’ll start by defining clear goals for a first iteration based on your priorities, and I’ll start working on it. I will proactively report about my progress on the way

Delivery

At the end of the iteration, we’ll start putting your newly crafted solution into production, fix what needs to be fixed and give doc, training or accesses to your team members. We’ll also start to gather data and feedback to make it even better !

Rinse, repeat !

Innovation is a constant process and infrastructure is never perfect. From now on, we can move on to your next priorities, use data and feedback to continuously improve your infrastructure and processes. Or we can go to maintenance mode ! It’s up to you !

*PRICING

That’s how I eat

Open Source

350€per day

Only for OpenSource project or work

Either your main product is OpenSource software, or the code I will be producing will be released under an OpenSource license. Call me to discover if you qualify.

Can mix with other pricing

If only some part of the work concerns an OpenSource project or will be released under an OpenSource license, only that part will be billed with the discounted pricing

Everybody wins

OpenSource is great for everybody. It's great for the engineering community at large, to promote your company's engineering culture and to promote my own skill.

Trial period

Typically for young bootstrapped companies with low revenue or pre-seed/seed stage startups.

2-5 days

Depending on your project and constraints, we will discuss the appropriate trial period during our initial call. It usually never exceeds 5 days.

Money back guarantee

At the end of the trial period, if you are not satisfied with my services and decide not to continue working with me, you won't have to pay me. But... I will keep the property of any work that was made during the trial.